The ASEAN Miracle Quotes

“Clearly, ASEAN needs to strengthen its secretariat. In contrast to the budget of the EU Secretariat, which is US$154 billion, the annual budget of the ASEAN Secretariat is US$19 million.”
― Kishore Mahbubani, The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace

“ASEAN’s role in providing a neutral geopolitical platform for great-power engagement is particularly valuable in the current context of major great-power shifts. The reason only ASEAN can do this is that it is the only party trusted by all the powers in the region.”
― Kishore Mahbubani, The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace

“2012 Phnom Penh meeting indicated that the South China Sea issue was beginning to affect the ASEAN-China relationship.”
― Kishore Mahbubani, The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace

“However, America also began to see its many Cold War allies in a new light, questioning their usefulness and seeing their flaws in sharper relief. Since it would have been seen as unethical (not to mention ungrateful) to use and then abandon allies, America needed an ethical justification. Under Jimmy Carter in the 1980s, America started bringing human rights into foreign policy conversations. By the 1990s, human rights were used as a tool to create distance from inconvenient or former allies.”
― Kishore Mahbubani, The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace

“Indonesia’s strategic location in the Indian Ocean and its control of the Melaka and Sunda Straits made the country exceptionally important for US strategic and security interests in the region.”
― Kishore Mahbubani, The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace

“The US and Thailand signed an accord in October 1985 setting up a war reserve weapons stockpile in Thailand, making it the first country without a US military base to have such an arrangement.”
― Kishore Mahbubani, The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace

“The mutual benefits of two-way trade, and the willingness of Southeast Asian rulers to submit, at least symbolically, to China may also explain the relative lack of military conflict between China and Southeast Asia over the centuries.”
― Kishore Mahbubani, The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace

“China usually gave much more than it received from these missions, reflecting the court’s attitude that its smaller neighbours had little to offer their great nation, and demonstrating Chinese generosity”.”
― Kishore Mahbubani, The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace

“In reality, the rulers of Southeast Asia were keen to send tributes to China because they found it to be immensely profitable.”
― Kishore Mahbubani, The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace

“By paying tribute, these kingdoms could in turn engage in profitable trade with China. They exported tin, spice and a variety of forest products to China while importing much-coveted Chinese luxury goods (such as ceramics, tea and silk) and metals (such as iron and copper). The shrewd Chinese leaders understood that withholding market access to, or restricting the supply of, coveted Chinese luxury products could provide Beijing with leverage over foreign kingdoms. Occasionally, Chinese rulers introduced sanctions to regulate or limit private trade in order to achieve foreign policy goals.”
― Kishore Mahbubani, The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace

“By the 11th century, after the fall of the Tang and as the rise of the Song dynasty led to new demand from China, Srivijaya’s dominance of Southeast Asia was challenged from an unusual quarter, India.”
― Kishore Mahbubani, The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace

“With a fine natural harbour accessible even to the largest ocean-going vessels, and located strategically in the Straits of Malacca, the new kingdom of Srivijaya became a more competitive port of call as trade between the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean flowed through the straits. Srivijaya prospered rapidly and was able to maintain a commercial hegemony over the smaller ports of the Indonesian archipelago, dominating seaborne commerce from the 7th to the 11th centuries. Srivijaya was the first in a succession of great seaports (Malacca, Aceh, Batavia, Penang and Singapore) that were to derive their strength from occupying a prominent location alongside the Straits of Malacca.”
― Kishore Mahbubani, The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace

“From their strategic location at the Straits of Malacca, early Malay-Indonesian seafarers dominated both the China trade and the Indian Ocean trade. The Indonesians “traded with India by 500 BCE and China by 400 BCE, and around the beginning of the Common Era, they carried goods between China and India”.24”
― Kishore Mahbubani, The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace

“Southeast Asia has been intimately associated and involved with four of the great universalist cultures and civilizations of the world: India, China, Islam and the West.”
― Kishore Mahbubani, The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace

“The most important strategic relationship is always that between the world’s greatest power (today, the US) and the world’s greatest emerging power (China). Both worked closely together to thwart the Soviet Union in the 1980s. This helped ASEAN. Today, even though there is a remarkable degree of cooperation between the US and China, there is also a rising degree of competition. If this competition gets out of hand, ASEAN could be split apart. This is why a key message of this chapter is that all the great powers, including America, China, India, Japan and the EU, have a stake in keeping ASEAN together.”
― Kishore Mahbubani, The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace

“how the extraordinary diversity of Southeast Asia came about. In all the many interpretations of the region’s history, there is one undeniable fact: Southeast Asia has served as the crossroads of the world for over 2,000 years. The remarkable cultural diversity of Southeast Asia is also a result of this. At least four major cultural waves have swept through Southeast Asia: the Indian, Chinese, Muslim and Western waves.”
― Kishore Mahbubani, The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace

“Now imagine a world where Donald Trump (a Christian), Xi Jinping (a Confucian Communist), Vladimir Putin (an Orthodox Christian), Ayatollah Khamenei (a Muslim) and Narendra Modi (a Hindu) came together to sign a declaration for peaceful collaboration.”
― Kishore Mahbubani, The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace

“When then President Barack Obama visited Laos in September 2016, he reminded us that America had dropped more than two million tons of bombs here in Laos—more than we dropped on Germany and Japan combined during all of World War II. It made Laos, per person, the most heavily bombed country in history.”
― Kishore Mahbubani, The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace

“No other region in the world can match its cultural, religious, linguistic and ethnic diversity. In a relatively small geographical space, we find 240 million Muslims, 130 million Christians, 140 million Buddhists and 7 million Hindus. This range of religious diversity is remarkable in itself. But it actually masks a deeper cultural diversity.”
― Kishore Mahbubani, The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace

“The reason ASEAN has emerged as the indispensable platform for great-power engagement in the Asia-Pacific region is that it is too weak to be a threat to anyone. So all the great powers instinctively trust it.”
― Kishore Mahbubani, The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace

“Within ASEAN, a culture of peace has evolved as a result of imbibing the Indonesian custom of musyawarah and mufakat (consultation and consensus). Now ASEAN has begun to share this culture of peace with the larger Asia-Pacific region.”
― Kishore Mahbubani, The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace

“The more than 600 million people living in the region have seen remarkable progress in the 50 years since the formation of the association. ASEAN has brought peace and prosperity to a troubled region, generated inter-civilizational harmony in the most diverse corner of the earth”
― Kishore Mahbubani, The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace

“one weakness of ASEAN is that the 600 million people who live in Southeast Asia do not feel a sense of ownership of ASEAN.”
― Kishore Mahbubani, The ASEAN Miracle: A Catalyst for Peace